The SV was REQUIRED to STAND ON and maintain course and speed until such time as it was obvious that a collision was unavoidable. (There is some interesting Admiralty court rulings in Cockroft et al on the actual timings for this). When this time came he would have had only one option, to make a bold alteration to starboard. I am not a WAFI so this is out of my area, but I suspect a bold alteration of course on a SV of that size would not be as straightforward as it sounds.

Don't know the sail configuration on the SV but looks like a starboard turn would have been against the wind, can be tricky to do fast on this size vessel. The trawler crashed just about the stern, in this scenario very difficult for the WAFI to do much about it.

The trawler master waked up just before impact(or runs to the bridge from the cargo hold...), looks like he makes full astern and turns to starboard, might be that it would have turned steeper without that reversing maneuver...not hitting the SV.

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fun on a boat is inversely proportional to size...sort of anyway

.......and if the SV had altered to starboard at the last minute then he would have presented a stern aspect to the FV. I suspect this would have been much worse as the FV would have simply ploughed into and over the SV. As it was there was a glancing blow to the port quarter and no damage below the weather deck - at least it appears that way. Most of time I would take the anti-WAFI viewpoint but in this case he did exactly the right thing.

Looks like the sailing vessel might have had to tack to make any kind of stbd turn, on a boat like that it could take anything up to 20-30 mins to do so, inc mustering the off watch crew, organising manning of all stations, climbing yard arms etc.

If the sailing skipper had been keeping a good watch, it would have been fairly clear that a collision was a possibility. If the VHF didn't get the trawler's attention then it was time to come up with Plan B - and I wouldn't call tooting a Plan B

Let's face it, this "accident" happened at 8 knots - there would have been time to consider the options.

But VHF is not supposed to be the solution is this situation - whereas sound signal can be (although they seemed like long blasts not short ones to me).

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Originally Posted by martini

Looks like the sailing vessel might have had to tack to make any kind of stbd turn, on a boat like that it could take anything up to 20-30 mins to do so, inc mustering the off watch crew, organising manning of all stations, climbing yard arms etc.

OOW on the FV was fast asleep or taking a dump, one of the two

Aye, but are there other option like taking off all (or some) way, or presumably the SV has engines - so running them (whether forwards or in reverse.

Poly - I hopped into this thread taking a purely practical approach to the collision, I suppose thinking about how I would have handled it (theoretically)

Patently, I wasn't there, so I can't be and wouldn't want to be the Judge and Jury. However, at the back of my mind is the notion that the SV skipper/helm had a beady on the FV for a bit before the tooting started. Sound signals are fine if someone is awake to hear them. I wonder was he simply alerting his own crew to the developing crisis? This period is what interests me most. Use of the VHF (and binoculars to get an ID) in a developing collision situation is entirely reasonable, not because you need to establish right of way, but simply to ascertain as early as possible if the FV had seen the SV and what his intentions were. Given the terrible reputation FVs have, if I heard nothing back, I'd assume the worse and consider taking action - not wait until the collision was unavoidable as suggested somewhere. That time was where the helm had a few minutes (and it SHOULD have been minutes) to activate some sort of crew response and get ready to change course.

I think it occurred because the helm on the FV was asleep or away from his post and because the stand on vessel were WAFIs. Nothing in COLREGs insists you stand on to the point of collision, quite the opposite in fact.

I'd like to thank Wavelength for this thread, BTW. Yesterday was VERY slow on here and this one will run until 0100 tomorrow and beyond. I expect a daughter thread in the Bilges shortly, when someone's pipe ash gets ejected vertically and burns a hole in their peajacket